Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
For which nn is it possible to fill the nn by nn table with 00's, 11's and 22's so that the sums of numbers in rows and columns take all different values from 11 to 2n2n?

Solution

Solution:
For odd nn it is impossible to create a table like that. Indeed, in such a table the sum of all column sums and row sums would be 1+2++2n=n(2n+1)1+2+\ldots+2n = n(2n+1), and so would be odd. But it would also be twice the sum of all the numbers in the table (each number counted twice - once in the column sum, once in the row sum), and so would have to be even. This contradiction proves that no such table exists.

For any even nn such a table exists. If one takes a 2k2k by 2k2k table and fills in all the elements above the main diagonal (running from upper left to lower right corner of the table) with 22's, all the elements below the main diagonal with 00's, first kk elements on the diagonal with 11's and the last kk elements on the main diagonal with 22's, one gets a table that satisfies the conditions. Indeed, the sums of elements in the first kk rows (top to bottom) are 4k1,4k3,,2k+14k-1, 4k-3, \ldots, 2k+1, the next kk rows 2k,2k2,,22k, 2k-2, \ldots, 2. The sums of elements in the first kk columns (left to right) are 1,3,,2k11, 3, \ldots, 2k-1, the next kk columns 2k+2,,4k2k+2, \ldots, 4k. We see that all the numbers from 11 to 4k4k appear exactly once, as wanted.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.